wow The Real Reason the Ripcord Won't Be Pulled for Covenants?

[Calorat 78]

30 minutes ago, RLKhaos said:

It would unravel the design of how THEY want the expansion to play. Game devs don't make games FOR consumers they make games out of love and that is what they enjoy doing. They have NO obligation to sate player demands. 70 percent of the player base doesn''t even know how the game works they just read whats good at that time from icyveins and wowhead. World of warcraft and MMO's in general might as well be thrown in the same lot as eve where its all a spreadsheet simulator. Until players can stop meta gaming this will always be the way it is. TLDR: People need to learn to enjoy a work of art  that another group of humans spend hours and hours and hours making and top being so critical over everything, it is getting old and it is ruining the industry.

"Game devs don't make games FOR consumers.  They have NO obligation to sate player demands"    This is the problem right here.  If you want people to play your game you make the game for those people not yourself.  You sate the demand of what the player wants cause those are the people buying your product.  You want people to stop meta-gaming? Make a game where it doesn't matter or do everything you can to lessen the affects of meta-gaming.  Make a game where the biggest end game content (mythic keys)  isn't a speed run requiring min-maxing to excel at it.   The entire obligation of the company is to sate player demands so they will continue to pay for your product.  Want people to stop being critical?  Make a better product so there is less to criticize.   What's ruining the industry is attitudes like your's where it's the players fault they don't like a badly designed game,  Stop blaming player's for not liking a product  that's garbage and getting mad when they tell you "Hey this product is garbage"  Don't try to wrap the same garbage up 3 different ways over the course of 3 expansions and keep telling the playerbase "we know what's best for you" as the playerbase flees in droves cause they are smart enough to see what you are giving them is still garbage.

[leapingshadow 50]

6 hours ago, Senou said:

I remember when streamers and youtubers like PreachGaming said that blizzard's reaction to feedback from their players was awesome and that they were listening. Well I think they did not listen enough.
Of course its nice to not have system on top of a system on top of a system like in BfA but instead from the start of the expansion but honestly, does blizzard even consider some other choices? By now almost everyone said that the should just make the covenant abilities into some sort of talent unbound to their original covenants, since we're already helping everyone anyway. The solution is literally at hand. The conduits do not matter much, since except for the ability- focused conduit, you have almost all the important stuff with any conduit anyway. "More Damage from Skill X", yes, all four covenants do have that..

I already feel exhausted and Shadowlands isn't even live yet. I already want this expansion to be over. I don't care anymore. I'm around since 2004 and I never had trouble to find a class I like to play, except for now. I dislike the idea of being forced to choose between story and visual stuff and the strength I get in PvE. I don't want to join maldraxxus on my warlock but if I don't I am literally trolling my progress guild. THAT is some great design. Thanks blizzard.

Does your guild ask your entire group to re-roll every time the meta shifts in a new patch? If they don't, then they probably won't be asking you to do it for these as well.

A raid is not just one encounter, and WoW is not just raiding. It's not that X is better than Y, it's that X is superior than Y is Z is met, if not, then Y is superior. It's about building your character. Nobody is complaining about the way that Classic talents are built and that people often take the wrong build. If you are taking yourself so seriously as to always play what's best, then you've also got to remember that no king rules forever, and understand why you're really playing this game. 

[Starym 3,800]

2 hours ago, SidonisAntares said:

 Alpha - core systems can be redesigned

Beta - bug finding and tuning

Once Covenants made it out of Alpha as is, the possibility of them being altered to be easy to switch back to before the next content patch became near zero.

If this is the case it's REEEEEEEEAAALLLY disingenuous of Ion to say that there's a ripcord when he said it.

[Starym 3,800]

1 hour ago, Doozum said:

No, criticism is good. And clearly Blizzard has heard it, otherwise they wouldn't aknowledge it. Taking criticism and still sticking to it doesn't mean it's not useful, heard and taken into acount. They obviously have a reason for this, and that's bringing choice back into the game. And whether you like it or not, it has worked ? Choices are back and meaningful. Maybe not the best iteration of choice, but it's hard to make something perfect in the eyes of so many people.

I don't get why player power HAS to be the thing that makes the choice though. I also like meaningful choices (and I don't really care about the whole Covenant drama personally, it doesn't affect me, I'll just pick the most fun Covenant and or ability) but the Covenants already ARE meaningful choices before you add these pointless player power additions like the abilities. Whetehr I want to be a Vampire or angel dude, the big focus on zones and unlocking the cool stuff in them, the transmogs mounts... it's already so much, why bring in character power into it? And if you absolutely MUST then why not separate that part and make it more easily swappable?

Anyway that's my take on it ? I don't think either side on this is particularly wrong btw, but I do think the decision will hurt the game in that many players will be unhappy with it - whether they're right or not is kinda irrelevant at this point, if you read the amount of aggro and hate this ONE decision has caused it was SO not worth it for Blizz and I honestly couldn't understand why they were sticking to this. Now after this little marketing gem I fully understand and am sad it's going to damage the game.

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, Doozum said:

No, criticism is good. And clearly Blizzard has heard it, otherwise they wouldn't aknowledge it. Taking criticism and still sticking to it doesn't mean it's not useful, heard and taken into acount. They obviously have a reason for this, and that's bringing choice back into the game. And whether you like it or not, it has worked ? Choices are back and meaningful. Maybe not the best iteration of choice, but it's hard to make something perfect in the eyes of so many people.

That's only true if all choices are useful and balanced (doesn't mean they should all be the same). With how much to balance there is, it's simply impossible to have it all tuned well. Picking something that might simply make you weaker (and if you want to return to your previous Covenant, you have to grind for a while), doesn't feel like freedom of choice, especially when there is so much information available what is best. Even random people may call you out that you have picked badly (and many pugs already want only "meta" classes and specs).

A simple solution to it, and many people had this idea already, was to make all of them available as a separate talent choice, while Covenants would remain as purely cosmetic choice. Now that's a freedom of choice. Them not changing Covenants now is likely due to limited time they had to develop these things, so it's probably too late to change them in a meaningful way. As others have pointed out, we might see another system on top of existing ones, like BfA did with Azerite essences.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Arcling

[Senou 40]

2 hours ago, leapingshadow said:

Does your guild ask your entire group to re-roll every time the meta shifts in a new patch? If they don't, then they probably won't be asking you to do it for these as well.

A raid is not just one encounter, and WoW is not just raiding. It's not that X is better than Y, it's that X is superior than Y is Z is met, if not, then Y is superior. It's about building your character. Nobody is complaining about the way that Classic talents are built and that people often take the wrong build. If you are taking yourself so seriously as to always play what's best, then you've also got to remember that no king rules forever, and understand why you're really playing this game. 

Actually yes at least to a certain extend. If you consider warlock and the decimating bolt ability, you get a shitton on DPS and since its an execute effect that gets stronger the less HP the boss has, the more important it becomes. I would literally troll if I throw away about 10-20% of my damage if not more.

[Senou 40]

4 hours ago, Teufel said:

Honestly, at this point I kinda stopped minding it.

They are spot-on with comparing it to race/class combo, though, it's been years and we're still seeing high end players favoring a race (Human/Forsaken PvP ladder in Cata, "Troll Family Photo" worldfirsts in MoP/WoD, either elven race plaguing M+ ladder in Legion/BfA) to squeeze a lil' extra in, what else is exactly new, except you're not paying money to do so.

Yeah, might suck for the "1%", but why are the rest are acting like chosing a non-meta one would ruin their characters? We're not playing our characters to their fullest already (yes, we are not, get over yourself, average player with inflated ego), do you really think the "meta" covenant is gonna fix it? 

Most people watch these top 1% players on streams or youtube and ask for their opinio. They check their logs and raider.io and learn from what's best for each class and spec. Just like today with corruptions and azerite traits it will be the same with gear forever. Of course there will always be a few snowflakes who just pick what sounds nice or looks amazing but these "elite players" wrap their heads around the pure numbers, wether it looks or feels good or not. It if performs the best, they will take it and PUGs and LFGs will do it just like they do.
If you don't believe that, pick a character of yours and try to get into a key +10 or higher or a heroic Ny'alotha run. I bet you won't get invited unless your score is high or you're a meta class.

[Teufel 331]

Just now, Senou said:

Most people watch these top 1% players on streams or youtube and ask for their opinio. They check their logs and raider.io and learn from what's best for each class and spec. Just like today with corruptions and azerite traits it will be the same with gear forever. Of course there will always be a few snowflakes who just pick what sounds nice or looks amazing but these "elite players" wrap their heads around the pure numbers, wether it looks or feels good or not. It if performs the best, they will take it and PUGs and LFGs will do it just like they do.
If you don't believe that, pick a character of yours and try to get into a key +10 or higher or a heroic Ny'alotha run. I bet you won't get invited unless your score is high or you're a meta class.

I believe that and it's still as meaningless as I said before. I personally know a few (and I believe there are armies of those) that are braindead enough to just go 'Ooooh, that 5k (class) is using (essence/talent build/corruption setup), I'm gonna use that too!'. They don't know why that player is using these. Simmed higher? Azertie setup? Stat distribution? Corruption promotes it? Specific dungeon? Affix? Party composition? Tactic? Nope. They know *filtered*, they've just copied with no idea of or experience on what to do with it, and in the end they'll be just that Huntard example mentioned above. Adding a covenant choice here would be a distinction without difference.

Also, are you serious with that last one? Anything decently geared can get into H Nya and if your 'score is not high enough', I dunno... make it higher? Did a keystone master recently on a 'bottom tier spec' alt with the relations to the main character hidden (and, tbh, they differ in role too, so wouldn't make much of a difference), and only ran into the issue of 'nah, we want (S-tier spec)' about twice.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Teufel

[SidonisAntares 290]

2 hours ago, Starym said:

If this is the case it's REEEEEEEEAAALLLY disingenuous of Ion to say that there's a ripcord when he said it.

Half of his job is PR damage control. That said, I'm sure the ripcord actually exists, since its basically (and this is extremely simplified) variable counting to determine: if you've been x covenant before, then you get this quest line to complete to go back to it, else you are immediately allowed to switch to your new covenant choice, and choosing a covenant whether your very first or switching, adds a token to the bucket for that faction to be checked against if you leave that covenant and then wish to switch back. The ripcord is simply reverting to earlier design (either Alpha F&F or earlier builds pre-Alpha) where they just wanted to make sure you could switch between covenants multiple times at all.

But the fact that the system went ahead as is into Beta signifies that they have already made up their minds, for at least the duration of the opening content tier.

[Asakash 22]

40 minutes ago, Teufel said:

I believe that and it's still as meaningless as I said before. I personally know a few (and I believe there are armies of those) that are braindead enough to just go 'Ooooh, that 5k (class) is using (essence/talent build/corruption setup), I'm gonna use that too!'. They don't know why that player is using these. Simmed higher? Azertie setup? Stat distribution? Corruption promotes it? Specific dungeon? Affix? Party composition? Tactic? Nope. They know *filtered*, they've just copied with no idea of or experience on what to do with it, and in the end they'll be just that Huntard example mentioned above. Adding a covenant choice here would be a distinction without difference.

Also, are you serious with that last one? Anything decently geared can get into H Nya and if your 'score is not high enough', I dunno... make it higher? Did a keystone master recently on a 'bottom tier spec' alt with the relations to the main character hidden (and, tbh, they differ in role too, so wouldn't make much of a difference), and only ran into the issue of 'nah, we want (S-tier spec)' about twice.

But it's not always pressure from outside. Most people I know are ambitious enough to be the best team mate they can be. That's part of an mmo, imo. If you like different aspects of the game, that's totally fine. But there's a reason why this is such a huge topic, why legendaries were a big topic at the beginning of Legion and Azerite in BfA. 
Because it DOES bother very many players. And it's the same basic reason every time, that you feel like you can't be as well prepared as others, depending on some restrictions or rng.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Asakash

[Skayan 52]

Not choosing the better upgrade because it's less flashy or you just don't like it because "no" is the rightest thing to do.

Playing a DPS spec and choosing the covenant that has an ability you like a lot but does 1/10 of what your BiS covenant would do on multi-target to *filtered* off the childish 1% min-maxer players is fun and games are always about fun.

Most players do not care about covenants and only 1% will go for the BiS.

There aren't more than 1% who would like to change spec and covenant more often than 7 days. The 1% is just overreacting.

Not everyone can play WoW 24/7, i play WoW 1 hour a day because i'm not a nerd and somehow i can play one spec for longer than 7 days. Altoholic btw.

I spent too many wow tokens on rerolling Azerite traits because i had to reroll twice a day. I'm so hyped for the Shadowlands! I will surely change spec less often God bless Blizzard.

... BfA taught us one thing

If you want to enjoy this expansion, take a break from WoW and don't come back until X.3 release. 

[Starym 3,800]

3 hours ago, SidonisAntares said:

Half of his job is PR damage control. That said, I'm sure the ripcord actually exists, since its basically (and this is extremely simplified) variable counting to determine: if you've been x covenant before, then you get this quest line to complete to go back to it, else you are immediately allowed to switch to your new covenant choice, and choosing a covenant whether your very first or switching, adds a token to the bucket for that faction to be checked against if you leave that covenant and then wish to switch back. The ripcord is simply reverting to earlier design (either Alpha F&F or earlier builds pre-Alpha) where they just wanted to make sure you could switch between covenants multiple times at all.

But the fact that the system went ahead as is into Beta signifies that they have already made up their minds, for at least the duration of the opening content tier.

True, but then it was disingenouous to imply that they would ever EVER pull it before the expansion (since that was the context they were talking about).

[Senou 40]

4 hours ago, Teufel said:

I believe that and it's still as meaningless as I said before. I personally know a few (and I believe there are armies of those) that are braindead enough to just go 'Ooooh, that 5k (class) is using (essence/talent build/corruption setup), I'm gonna use that too!'. They don't know why that player is using these. Simmed higher? Azertie setup? Stat distribution? Corruption promotes it? Specific dungeon? Affix? Party composition? Tactic? Nope. They know *filtered*, they've just copied with no idea of or experience on what to do with it, and in the end they'll be just that Huntard example mentioned above. Adding a covenant choice here would be a distinction without difference.

Also, are you serious with that last one? Anything decently geared can get into H Nya and if your 'score is not high enough', I dunno... make it higher? Did a keystone master recently on a 'bottom tier spec' alt with the relations to the main character hidden (and, tbh, they differ in role too, so wouldn't make much of a difference), and only ran into the issue of 'nah, we want (S-tier spec)' about twice.

I'm not too sure if you're trolling at this point of if you cannot wrap your head around the idea that there are people not in the top 1% bracket who still want to perform at their peak. We all do know why which talent is picked in which scenario etc. We do work stuff out for ourselves but in the end we come to the same conclusion as the top tier players.
You're lucky if you have had little trouble with the LFG- Tool, I on my hand couldn't get into the raids or M+ Groups I wanted before I joined my current raid. That is a fact. People always care. They always want the best performing players by their side, because they want to win. Even if they're not at top performance themselves, losing just isn't fun.

[Senou 40]

1 hour ago, Skayan said:

Not choosing the better upgrade because it's less flashy or you just don't like it because "no" is the rightest thing to do.

Playing a DPS spec and choosing the covenant that has an ability you like a lot but does 1/10 of what your BiS covenant would do on multi-target to *filtered* off the childish 1% min-maxer players is fun and games are always about fun.

Most players do not care about covenants and only 1% will go for the BiS.

There aren't more than 1% who would like to change spec and covenant more often than 7 days. The 1% is just overreacting.

Not everyone can play WoW 24/7, i play WoW 1 hour a day because i'm not a nerd and somehow i can play one spec for longer than 7 days. Altoholic btw.

I spent too many wow tokens on rerolling Azerite traits because i had to reroll twice a day. I'm so hyped for the Shadowlands! I will surely change spec less often God bless Blizzard.

... BfA taught us one thing

If you want to enjoy this expansion, take a break from WoW and don't come back until X.3 release. 

You rerolled twice a day when you only played 1 hour? Honestly you guys don't understand how media seems to work these days. Those 1%- people influence almost the entirety of the remaining 99% with their content. Its absolute madness to believe that it is only them if you just follow some comments on youtube, icy veins, twitter or even in the official forums. A lot of people do care.

[Halock 156]

10 hours ago, Teufel said:

Name a few of those 'sooo many reasons'. 

I wonder whether it's not so much the reasons as the fact the reasons feel bad.

Y'know that old story how back in Beta they used to give you -% XP if you played past a certain point, people hated it, so they changed it into the current +% XP system that is Rested XP whilst leaving XP gain rates exactly the same -- and people liked it? 

Classic's been really interesting for me. I've found loads of really almost violent restrictions in there. Not being able to easily respec talents is harsh, for example. But somehow most of it feels meaningful instead of restrictive. Something a lot of people have been saying, including Blizzard, is that restriction creates meaning. But it's not necessarily that simple. Sometimes restriction just feels restrictive.

I wonder whether Covenants have crossed that line into restrictive. It's not that it'll greatly affect people, or that it's an unreasonable restriction. It's, perhaps, that it feels restrictive.

And tbh I don't really know why that might be, why or how it might have crossed that line, but I do wonder if that's the distinction.

[SidonisAntares 290]

4 hours ago, Starym said:

True, but then it was disingenouous to imply that they would ever EVER pull it before the expansion (since that was the context they were talking about).

If the outcry had been large enough, I'm sure they would have, at least to test it out on beta. But by telling everyone that the ripcord exists, he accomplished his mission of calming the playerbase down long enough for them to work out the long winded 'suck it' statement everyone is still digesting from last week.

[Starym 3,800]

5 minutes ago, SidonisAntares said:

If the outcry had been large enough, I'm sure they would have, at least to test it out on beta. But by telling everyone that the ripcord exists, he accomplished his mission of calming the playerbase down long enough for them to work out the long winded 'suck it' statement everyone is still digesting from last week.

Haha, ok I'm loving your cynicism! I had the same thoughts but I kinda end up more in the middle of the road and don't think it was a huge conspiracy/PR talk. Although I do agree with you he just kinda said that off-hand to calm things down in the interview itself/they DO have the ripcord ready and CAN make all of that happen, but as you say, people didn't riot and 90% of the sub base didn't cancel their subs over it = no pulling.

[SidonisAntares 290]

Just now, Starym said:

Haha, ok I'm loving your cynicism! I had the same thoughts but I kinda end up more in the middle of the road and don't think it was a huge conspiracy/PR talk. Although I do agree with you he just kinda said that off-hand to calm things down in the interview itself/they DO have the ripcord ready and CAN make all of that happen, but as you say, people didn't riot and 90% of the sub base didn't cancel their subs over it = no pulling.

I don't think it's a huge conspiracy, I'm just looking at it from how Lead Developer has always been half PR, all the way back to Tigole.

[Teufel 331]

4 hours ago, Senou said:

I'm not too sure if you're trolling at this point of if you cannot wrap your head around the idea that there are people not in the top 1% bracket who still want to perform at their peak. We all do know why which talent is picked in which scenario etc. We do work stuff out for ourselves but in the end we come to the same conclusion as the top tier players.
You're lucky if you have had little trouble with the LFG- Tool, I on my hand couldn't get into the raids or M+ Groups I wanted before I joined my current raid. That is a fact. People always care. They always want the best performing players by their side, because they want to win. Even if they're not at top performance themselves, losing just isn't fun.

A very naive line of thought of you, especially "we all" parts, I'd speak for myself if I were you.

Reality is, the majority copypastes without thinking - and plenty of those that do think, are not playing it properly - and you probably didn't just do enough pugging to notice. Maybe you didn't get enough of those BMs (or Havoc. or Fire.) mentioned above in your groups to wrap your head around that "meta" is pretty meaningless if a player is crappy on what to do with it, and you should take a 2.5k SPriest over 3k BM in the event utility is not a concern - because if the former did get there, their chances of being good are way better than Hunter's. Of course, most of the time, you can't tell just by looking at the character or IO, which worsens the copypaste situation. 

And there are always those mad Asians with something like Echoing Void tanks to throw the "same conclusions" in the trashcan. I myself was rolling my eyes at a Spirit Bomb DH with Touch of the Everlasting major in a pug key a couple weeks ago - and was pleasantly surprised by the end of the run. 

Point is: covenants do not change this situation drastically for the absolute majority of the community. I want a billion dollars, but do I need it? Not really. Can you do your usual level of conent with a 'non-meta' covenant? If the answer is 'no', either you're doing something really cutting edge, need to improve overall or rethink wants and needs. That is, of course, before taking into account that the covenant is swappable if you insist on "I need my full power" or "want to experience the campaign" or "my RL demands it". And offspecs? It's in the term. Won't be "full power" by default, unless you're so late into the patch, you've perfected your offspec set. 

And in case you're getting the wrong idea: I also don't think covenants are a splendid mechanic, just as I'm amused by the people raging on about it without actual solid reasoning or it affecting them on the scale they make it out to be. Good thing it's still WoW, would turn into Skyrim if they get their way.

[Mourningstar 1]

People got too used to getting everything for free and only want the easy way. I'm happy that there are some consequences to your choices and i think there should be more of that.  I say that but in the end it won't matter to most players anyway. There is pretty much no reason to look at this "power" bonus given to you by specific covenant unless you are a mythic raider. If you want to clear heroic raids and m+ you don't need that few % boost. At this point alot of players are hating on this just for the sake of hate. "Some streamer said that its bad so i must say so too.." etc... They don't have their own opinion and are mostly just saying what someone else said. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Mourningstar

[Teufel 331]

5 hours ago, Halock said:

I wonder whether it's not so much the reasons as the fact the reasons feel bad.

Y'know that old story how back in Beta they used to give you -% XP if you played past a certain point, people hated it, so they changed it into the current +% XP system that is Rested XP whilst leaving XP gain rates exactly the same -- and people liked it? 

Classic's been really interesting for me. I've found loads of really almost violent restrictions in there. Not being able to easily respec talents is harsh, for example. But somehow most of it feels meaningful instead of restrictive. Something a lot of people have been saying, including Blizzard, is that restriction creates meaning. But it's not necessarily that simple. Sometimes restriction just feels restrictive.

I wonder whether Covenants have crossed that line into restrictive. It's not that it'll greatly affect people, or that it's an unreasonable restriction. It's, perhaps, that it feels restrictive.

And tbh I don't really know why that might be, why or how it might have crossed that line, but I do wonder if that's the distinction.

Good point, actually. Also, thanks for enlightening, I wasn't around until mid-WotLK, so the only major "restriction" I faced was lack of dual-triple spec (played a hybrid class and obviously leveling in a healer spec then was slow and painful).

But, I am among those oldass gamers that remember the RP games that did lock you into faction early on and you had to do a new run just to experience another route, might be part the reason the whole covenant thing is not affecting me as much. Those times, such things did not really feel restrictive and "choice and cosequence" is a foundation of RP genre. I *filtered* on Skyrim a lot, but that's the definitive issue of RP experience where "choice doesn't matter, you can do it all at once!", and its overwhelming popularity despite this indicates the big change in the mindsets.

 I most certainly do not think Blizz will execute it in a way that choosing a covenant would provide an experience so unique, that the player will find themselves itching to do another covenant. Personally, I stopped seeing Alliance/Horde difference a long time ago (other than Dazar'Alor being a hell to get through compared to Boralus. Screw whoever designed that pyramid). So, the only issue is player power. Which I think is not a true issue unless you are in need of those breadcrumbs. The rest is up to tuning.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Teufel

[Amorandra 7]

8 hours ago, Skayan said:

If you want to enjoy this expansion, take a break from WoW and don't come back until X.3 release.

Very true statement, did this for BFA and enjoyed it for a couple months until I could consistently kill n'zoth heroic.
Dropped it and went back too classic shortly after completing my goal. 

Will most likely do the same thing with how shadowlands systems are looking and clearly wont change until then.

[Asakash 22]

2 hours ago, Teufel said:

And in case you're getting the wrong idea: I also don't think covenants are a splendid mechanic, just as I'm amused by the people raging on about it without actual solid reasoning or it affecting them on the scale they make it out to be. Good thing it's still WoW, would turn into Skyrim if they get their way.

Yeaht, but there is so much solid reasoning, alone in this thread. The thing is, just as Blizz, you choose to not accept it and tell people how wrong they are for feeling the way they do.

I won't go on anymore on this, but one last thing.

It's so amazing how people say 'Classic was way more restrictive and everyone liked it. That's just not true. Things were changed for a Reason.
The talent trees for example. And that was at a time, where there was no Arena and no M+. And the fact that it was that restrictive, led to everyone having literally the same talents. Everyone. There was so little room for variance. 
That changed at least a bit. There will always be meta. But what Blizz is doing, is try to work against human psychology. 'There won't be meta gaming if we just make it such a pain in the a*s'.

There is literally no reason, why the player power connected to the covenants is that restrictive. Just make it swappable and undbind it from the covenants themselves. 
Everybody should be happy, there will be the meaningful choice which covenant you choose and people could still try out everything in different situations and try to be the best they can be.
The only reason, why people are against that, that comes to my mind, is pure spite. Just to annoy those, who min-max, because they don't play the game like i want them to.

[Skayan 52]

9 hours ago, Senou said:

You rerolled twice a day when you only played 1 hour? Honestly you guys don't understand how media seems to work these days. Those 1%- people influence almost the entirety of the remaining 99% with their content. Its absolute madness to believe that it is only them if you just follow some comments on youtube, icy veins, twitter or even in the official forums. A lot of people do care.

/s

edit.
I never thought anyone would take this seriously, c'mon.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Skayan

[Manbearpig 28]

Sooooo we complained enough to be able to refund Warcraft 3, maybe we can accomplish the same thing with Shadowlands? Because keeping the covenant system like this is a middle finger to everyone who isn't hardcore lore fan.

#Subscriptioncancelled

Edited September 15, 2020 by Manbearpig